More on LinuxToday

LWN: Linux-Mandrake: why and how?

WEBINAR:On-demand webcast

How to Boost Database Development Productivity on Linux, Docker, and Kubernetes with Microsoft SQL Server 2017 REGISTER >

"As most of you certainly know, the Linux-Mandrake distribution
is certainly one of the fastest Linux success-stories. Born from
nothing in 1998, MandrakeSoft has become an international company
with 70 employees and Linux-Mandrake is in the top 5 major Linux
distributions."

"Let's come back to the beginning of the adventure and
remember the good old days... In 1997 I had been playing with
Linux for several years ago and absolutely enjoyed it. ... I kept
on playing with Red Hat and KDE and in the same time I became more
and more interested in learning how to rebuild a customized Linux
distribution, with new packages and improvements. After a year
of learning, and seeing that Red Hat definitely wouldn't want to
put KDE in their distribution I decided to release a new Linux
distribution on the top of Red Hat Linux with KDE as default and
several improvements that would make it easier to use. After
all, it was GPLed so everyone could improve it and redistribute
it!"

"That was the time of Linux-Mandrake 5.1, in July, 1998. This
Linux distribution was only distributed through a few FTP servers
on the Internet: not so easy to get some positive answer to a
question such as 'hey! do you have 500 Mb of free space for me on
your FTP server?'. However I did it for fun and I did not forget to
send a few announces on the three or four main Linux news sites.
And then I went straight away on sunny holidays for 2 weeks. What a
surprise when I came back and checked my email! Ouch! More than two
hundreds messages about Linux-Mandrake ! Many people already loved
it definitely, some other provided the first improvements and two
companies in the USA and Australia announced me that they had
started a CD production of Mandrake. My God! Here I just understood
that Linux was more than just a techies hype and also that the
Internet decentralized development coupled to the Open-source
philosophy was incredibly powerful..."

"...we strongly believe in the role of a strong cooperation
between all major Linux playors through organizations such as Linux
Standard Base. It would be unacceptable for a Linux distribution to
say: 'we consider ourselves as the standard Linux distribution,
other follow us!'. That's the reason why we hope that things will
speed up in this area."